A gentle stroll in the Victorian lunchtime sun, from the MCG, over the William Barak Bridge, through Birrarung Marr towards Federation Square. An uncoordinated game of football breaks out between uncoordinated people.
Taking in the impressive finery of the rowing sheds and waterside bars on the Southbank of the Yarra River to my left and the imposing steepling finery of the CBD on my right I’m half aware of the people up ahead ambitiously attempting to transform Melbourne to the Maracana.
“Look out mate” comes the cry as the ball heads my way. Happy it’s going to avoid me my a well-judged fraction I decide to ignore the man’s warning and the desire to extravagantly trap the ball and walk on in my own world.

Whump.

Something smacks into my shin. It’s not the ball.

“Aw jeez sorry mate” giggles this charming girl from behind her sunglasses, picking the ball and herself out of the gutter as her mates roar with laughter. The call from the Matildas obviously got lost in the post.

Welcome to Australia.

My last 350 rupees are splurged on a mock-Mont Blanc pen (They’d run out of biros. Hello Tesco Nige, by the way.) within the airport terminal. A necessary procurement along with the complimentary notelets from the hotel. Scribble now, blog later. The devil will find work for idle hands to do. Several thousand miles to go. Mumbai to Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne in the company of Air Malaysia.

“When the President does it, that means that it is not a steaming pile of horse poo…” Frank Langella stars in the inflight movie’s main role on the Mumbai to Kuala Lumpur leg. Robot & Frank is the title apparently. People tune in inquisitively.
Frost & Nixon is one of my favourite films of all time. Your man Langella was Oscar nominated, deservedly, for his role as the doomed President. This is him, older, whiter, balder, more hang dog post his finest hour.**
Langella frowns his way mournfully through proceedings, trying hard to look interested, trying harder to maintain credibility as he conducts a cod-Short Circuit type relationship with a plastic space age robot of the type that failed the auditions for a Beastie Boys video. The best thing about the film is Liv Tyler’s legs. There is no harsher come down than the one from the White House, even as an actor.
Either that or there’s no business like show business.
The sound around me is the hurried rustling of passengers replacing their earphones back into the plastic bags. At least three hours before we land. Poor bloke.

The Aerotram, KL airport. I catch a glimpse of myself reflected in the window. Resplendent in Panama hat and horizontal striped blue and white t-shirt. Ye gods, it dawns on me that I look like I should be doing a turn on the waters of Venice or punting down the Cam. First impressions count. Don’t give those Aussies anything. In plenty of time for the connecting flight to Melbourne, I head to the gents to sort out my contact lenses but take the opportunity to address my sartorial issue. Emerging from the bogs sporting another shirt with the very embodiment of Great British man looking on earnestly from the breast, his name writ large.

Stelling.

I’m ready for Australia now.
I decide to carry the hat though.

Although, quite by accident, later it falls out of the overhead locker on to the head of a grumpy looking lady from beneath her hijab. That her young daughter is laughing isn’t making it any easier for me as I do my best to look solemnly apologetic.
Air Malaysia are good. I’ll fly with them again. Good staff, good choice of entertainment, well on the second part of the journey anyway.
Beef for the first time in ages functionally washed down with average air food claret. The Dark Knight Rises is well worth the wait. Gary Oldman needs to do a Bond film. Nearly the best thing about the film is Anne Hathaway’s arse. It is that good.
I don’t sleep. I never do on planes. Despite the wonderful hostesses doing their best to help by segueing smartly around my variations on a theme of gangly. Some kid behind me constantly sniffing grinners isn’t helping my route into subconsciousness. I ponder the previous night in the most comfortable bed in the world and consider twenty four hours is a long time in sleeping patterns. I also reflect on the evening’s film versus Skyfall. It keeps me awake. That and thoughts of the next month or so.
I’m excited. I think.

My first repast on Australian territory, just after seven as the sun comes up over Coober Pedy, washed down with weak black tea with the sound of Concrete Jungle on my iPad is, bizarrely, chicken pie in a box. Who? Why?
Air Malaysia’s attempt to mix it with the locals, or, genuinely, is chicken pie de rigeur among Malaysians first thing in the morning? Either way, it’s not worth devoting anymore words to.

Unlike Australia, which hopefully will give me a month or so of material. Time to get among the chazzwazzers….

*Ha ha! Hello erstwhile colleagues! I’m laughing now but I fear I’ll soon be begging for my job back.

**And, no, his role as the baddie in Cutthroat Island was not his finest hour, irony fans…..

The Waterstones Hotel, Andheri East, Mumbai. I shouldn’t be staying here. I’ve got the Australian economy to negotiate for the next month or so. £10 for a steak pie, £15 for a beer. If I buy a round, I will have to pawn my beloved Elstow cricket shirt. (Just imagine how much a Blunham one would go for, eh Nick?)

Monday evening, sat in Nagpur airport, with five weeks slumming it behind me and the thought of negotiating Mumbai by night, I’ve just committed the backpacker’s equivalent of sashaying down the wicket three balls into negotiating a spell from the opposition’s best left arm spinner on the fourth day in the baking heat. When you’re 55-4.

Weary after the late flight, the Sounds of the 60’s loving but basically useless taxi driver (though not in his choice of in-car sounds) and the communication breakdown between the online provider’s fiction and the hotel’s fact, I eventually get to my room.

The bed is bigger than Austria’s national debt. Four huge pillows lay tantalisingly on top. The mattress is easier than Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits. There’s a desk I won’t have time to sit at. A flat screen Plasma telly I won’t have time to watch. A minibar I won’t have time to drain. The bathroom features a cartoon by someone who dreams of being as brilliant as The Telegraph’s Matt.

Hot water! Instantly. Constantly. The travel beard goes (Hello Grandma! x) courtesy of the complimentary shaving cream, Bic-type razor and an old Squeeze album, though don’t ask me why I chose this as the soundtrack. The shower rids me properly of the dust I’ve been carrying around since Ahmedabad. I revitalise, reenergise and enjoy my sadly all too temporary surroundings.

Everything about the room admonishes yet justifies my decision to spend my last night in India in unalloyed comfort.

You can’t take it with you.

Just what I think as I ponder piking the Courvoisier and the Shortbread.

To the airport my good man. Jaldi jaldi….

Silence. No tooting, no tuk-tuks, no taxis. The pigeons attempting fruitlessly to nest on the synthetic roof of the hotel’s neighbouring outbuilding don’t get a look in either. No Call to Prayer to be heard today. Commerce is the ruling religion out here in Sahar, Mumbai.

The wake up call for the clientele is the distant sound of the Stock Markets opening.
The gentle hum of the under employed AC unit and the thick panel of sound proof window, my looking glass into the other side of India. The reinforced bubble. The India that pays the bills, moves the economy, keeps the rich obscenely richer and the foot on the throat of the others.

A mile into the clearing distance, giant jumbos climb at regular intervals into the morning Mumbai air. Hawks gracefully accompany them on the prowl for breakfast.
After five weeks of backpacking, for my last night in India I’ve had an upgrade. Welcome to Waterstones in East Andheri. A newly opened boutique hotel and a cross between The Rainforest Cafe and the ill-fated Cuban hotel in The Quantum Of Solace in among the familiar, bigger names. While the Gateway to India stands watch impressively in front of the Taj Mahal Hotel, here, overlooking the international airport, is the tradesman’s entrance.

After the first time in a long time, I’m on the inside looking out rather than the main attraction at the museum. Down to breakfast, through the impressive scored marble corridors and the rough shag astroturf carpet. Business people heads in papers, tablets, frothy coffees. Two mint blondes turn heads for a minute. A ghastly, reedy cover of a New Order song does the honours on the Muzak Jukebox. From the ceiling, plants grow downwards. Water cascades needlessly down the outside walls. Janitors pluck and sweep tirelessly at the omnipresent plastic grass.

The black coffee tastes good. I wonder fleetingly how that miserable Northern bastard from the hotel in Nagpur has got his this morning. I really don’t care. Lost in luxury and reflecting on England’s triumph, my second visit to this tempestuous holiday romance of a country and the next stop on my travels.

I sit in dreamy contemplation.

Then Wizard’s cretinous Christmas anthem playing over the hotel airwaves wakes me from my daydreams. Is nowhere safe from this horrible, horrible song? Time to go to the airport.

Sukriya India.

Ian Bell, the hero of Jamtha. I liked writing that. Well played sir.
Well played Trotty. Well played Jimmy.

Well played England.

Of course, it was all down to this you know…..

Fair ye well, Lucky Paul. Go well in Nepal sir.
See you for a few Monteiths in Dunedin in about eleven weeks time and the start, just before play as custom now dictates, of the first Test Match between New Zealand and England.

You can tell a city by the club it keeps. Kolkata has the Tollygunge. Mumbai has the Taj. Nagpur, well, Nagpur has The Skylark.

Looking for a venue for our last night together, myself and the lads plump for Lucky Paul and Simon Nos’s hotel. Treading gingerly into the facilities, past the battered door marked “Bar & Grill” in neo-Tudor lettering and into a world that shrieks Phoenix Club.

All that’s missing is Brian Potter.

The Maharashtran Les Alanos are there, snuck steadfastly in a corner of the room, the circling disco lights and sound system are their protection from the outside world.
The room is a noxious mix of brown painted panels, dirty white tiles, dirtier mirrors, rust clad twisted iron grills and cream and ruby tiger striped seating. Tottenham versus Swansea carries on regardless. Two signs on the walls grab the eye. Firstly, and quite arbitrarily, Medium Of Cooking Soya Bean Refined Oil. Secondly, Smoking Zone. The reason for this becomes clear soon.

Eyes shut tightly, India Idol-that-never-was croons his way through another Hindi classic, buoyed on by Les Alanos and their wall of weird sound. I never even saw the choir. Our Marvin is joined by his Tammi Terrell. Another song falls on deaf English ears.

The bar begins to fill up. Regular faces from my hotel’s breakfast melee join the scene. Two middle aged chaps minus their mindless, shirtless Cockney pal come in to steal a glance at the telly. Simon Nos’s contact and our transport coordinator aka Nagpur’s Eighth Most Unreliable Man takes a seat at our table. Seedy looking single men filter towards the corner.
A fellow hotel guest, face like a melted Richard Nixon mask, a moaning, bullying shower of a Scunthorpe resident and probably the man who put the cu…. Anyway, he’s here. Complete with his monosyllabic bearded tit of a mate. I’m embarrassed to be from the same country as them. No black coffee or hot water to complain about now, just the Kingfisher. And the noise. Obviously.

The receipt roll from the clerk in the adjoining booth clacks slowly into life as the music fades. Is it part of the act?

It doesn’t matter. The music goes from Maharashtra to Mariarchi. The club from Phoenix to Coco Bongo. Those magicians in the corner on their keyboards have done it again. The reason for the upturn in punters suddenly becomes apparent.

The most beautiful girl in Nagpur takes the stage. The locals have their Tina. The Smoking Zone. This striking chanteuse strikes up a number. Collars are loosened. Pulses quicken. Repressed but shabbily dressed. Eyelashes flutter. Hearts pound. Warm applause greets the conclusion to the plaintive posturing.

I smile upon this scene, one of the only times I have in this armpit of a place in the last few days, and await the arrival of the one-legged Elvis. Or maybe Jerry’s Free N’ Easy Night?
Talent Trek?

Deciding I’m getting none of this. I head back to my hotel, for, hopefully, a decent night’s sleep. And the conclusion to an epic series of Test Cricket.

Hope, damn hope….

‘How lucky you English are to find the toilet so amusing. For us, it is a mundane and functional item. For you it is the basis of an entire culture.’
Baron von Richtoven, Blackadder Goes Forth

Well, yes. That and there’s sweet FA to write about in Nagpur (though, having said that, thanks to Swanny’s batting and Jimmy’s bowling, there may be something very pertinent to report on soon), plus the WiFi connection’s not great here.
Stand by you plumbers. Following on from the much viewed Bathrooms of Bombay post comes the inevitable follow up.

As luck would have it, I didn’t have the fortune to stay at this particular hotel. James and Vicki did. They thought I’d like a picture for my blog.
If the cistern’s Slimline, I’m not quite sure what that makes the seat…..

Have a great weekend all.

Nagpur. Unforgettably forgettable. Not warranting a whole page to itself in the Rough Guide, home to two million people and famous as the orange capital of India.

Oranges. Orange juice. A glass of locally produced, Vitamin C enriched, fresher than a dip in the Ouse on Christmas morning jus d’orange.
What a wonderful start to the day, the first day of the fourth and final Airtel Test Match.
I’ll just reach for the Room Service Menu….

Now then; Mineral Water, yep, Fruit Punch, non-alcoholic you’d imagine, Mango Shake, hmmm ok, Pineapple Shake, obviously, Strawberry Shake, uh-huh, I think I know what’s coming here, Juice-Tinned, riiiiiiiiiiiiggggghhhhtttt. Lemon Tea? Oh for Goodness sake….

Hang on a minute this is turning in to the Maharastrian version of the Cheese Shop Sketch.

No orange juice. In Nagpur. The orange capital of India. Really?

I’ll settle for an Immodium and a slice of Ma Wiss’s Christmas Cake instead, then (Thanks Mum! Xx Thanks for bringing it out Pete. Top man).

Let us hope England’s day bears more fruit.

An email plopped disconsolately into my mailbox a fortnight or so ago. My intended digs for Kolkata, it informed me, were actually full, and consequently, due to this oversight, I was homeless, or hotel-less to be precise. A further email an hour or two late from the same embarrassed source gave me the option of taking up their next best thing.

I took the next best thing.

Then I noticed on the Rough Guide map, the distance from the cricket ground, the distance from my co-travellers and fellow England fans and the nearest bar and cursed my luck.
The best part of a week later, I reckon, not for the first time on this trip, I may have misjudged things slightly. In fact, despite the haplessness of the substitute hotel, my stay in Kolkata is made for a number of other reasons.

The morning stroll to the nearest Metro station is one of the favourite parts of my match day routine. Locals look on dumbfounded as I purposefully stride through their early morning nuances. It’s a novel way to see the backstreets of this area of south Kolkata and all the nooks and crannies, the street sweepers and shopkeepers crank slowly into life.

I am enjoying the tranquility of solitude out here in the suburbs away from the bulk of the travelling England support bunkered down in Sudder Street. And there’s no pubs, so I can save up for at least one overpriced golden pint of horrible, tasteless- “aw mate, but it’s caaaaald mate”- Australian guff for when I get there soon.

Then there’s the evenings, my favourite part of my day. Sat in the hotel’s adjoining restaurant, The Wise Owl, half way down the Punya Das Road. Rooted to my wicker chair, captivated by my fellow diners, a Bollywood flick of a cast list of passers by, time slips enjoyably by as the unintentional soap opera plays out before my eyes.

The gossips are out in force. Joining me in the al fresco dining area, wrapped in jumpers, are the local beautiful people. Slipping seamlessly between Hindi, English and Hinglish, my ears prick up at the salacious stories doing the rounds between sips of lassi and pulls on Gold Leaf cigarettes.
Turning my attention away from Kolkata’s tangible take on Sex And The City and to my meal, vegetable lasagne served in a bowl with a spoon. The novelty value is augmented by the taste. It’s delicious. I nod approvingly at the waiters who wobble their heads back in gratitude.
The tiny Nepalese security guard, in between ambitiously asking for ‘teeps’, introduces me to, firstly his son, then the rest of the waiting staff. To a man; endearingly smiley, obliging and utterly hopeless. A happy band of Manuel-esque brothers.
The hotel manager presides over all this. A rotund man with a pencil moustache, attired in trainers, shirt and tie, like an off duty umpire with all the overbearing pretence, while an over-worked minion scuttles around doing the work of five men.

Peering out from behind the freshly painted picket fence and patio plants I study the form in the Punya Das road race. The contraband tuk-tuks full of workers heading to the night shift, weary blokes wheeling tradesman’s bicycles with cumbersome gas bottles strung to the front. The endless blue striped yellow taxis and their retarded hooting, the barefoot ice cream sellers wheeling their wares, wandering in hope rather than expectation.
A zeitgeist Raj-era gentleman in cravat, epaulettes, combover and immaculate moustache breezes in. Elegant women in luxurious pastel shaded saris destined for a nearby wedding head the other way. Their evening is about to begin, gathering up my notes and books I think about retiring for the night.

All Kolkata life is here. It’s been a pleasure sampling it.

Rubbish day, rubbish. All part of the grand scheme of things in travelling I suppose. A long ol’ journey from Kolkata to Nagpur that was hours later getting in than it should have. Then the obligatory heated exchange of views with Nagpur’s taxi and tuk-tuk drivers over their horrendous fares before a Basil Fawlty-esque stomp off to my hotel. Which was miles away.
Other stuff too, it’s not important.

Anyway, I intended to get a picture last night of some residents of Kolkata boarding a train under the caption, Bengalis On Platforms, a bit of a Morrissey tribute via the medium of photo. This hasn’t come out well. Sorry about that.

In the mean time, please see below a photo of my time in Mumbai. I’m afraid to report I don’t know who won.
Photo credits, Vicky & James, proper photographers.
(Hello chaps, hope all’s well? See you for a few beers in Paggers on your return home.)